Video cameras are currently in wide use. Similarly, video cameras are currently being widely used as peripheral devices to computers, and especially personal computers.
While there are a wide variety of applications which make use of cameras on computers, some include simply capturing live video images. Others include conducting surveillance. Still others use the camera for messaging, such as for conducting video instant messaging or video calls from a computer. In fact, it is becoming increasingly popular for users of cameras, connected to computers, to use those systems to talk to people (with both video and audio capability) around the world.
In each of these applications, it may be desirable to provide an enhanced user experience whereby a user can quickly and easily add video effects to an outgoing video stream so that the video effects appear as if they are being provided from the camera driver itself. It may also be desirable for the video effects to be displayed as if they are part of the original video stream, no matter what application they are eventually consumed by.
In some prior techniques, video effects were added to video frames by a consuming application. However, this requires generation and rendering of the video effects to be updated at each application, if the video effects are desired in that application. Processing video effects in this way can be undesirably expensive.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.